


My Mistress When She Walks, Treads on the Ground

by Cliotheproclaimer



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Romance, Romantic Fluff, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 15:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cliotheproclaimer/pseuds/Cliotheproclaimer
Summary: It is Pippa who suggests they go away together for the autumn half-term. As much as Hecate has come to love roaming the English countryside, there is something about the thought of the rest of the world that makes her shoulders tighten and her breathing quicken.But Pippa finds them a villa on the south coast of Spain and talks so beguilingly of golden sand and orange groves and sun-ripened evenings that Hecate feels her heart thrum with longing in her chest. And as October deepens and the nights begin to chill and draw in, Hecate feels more certainly than ever that she is not quite done with all that summer has to bring her.***Set quite a bit after s3 - aka the one where Hecate gets a well deserved holiday with Pippa.





	My Mistress When She Walks, Treads on the Ground

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this one! Definitely a bit different to my usual stuff.
> 
> Also - the piece of music that features in this piece is the adagio from the Concierto de Aranjuez, it's beautiful and I v much recommend you listen to it before/during/after reading if you haven't already.

It is an odd thing, Hecate thinks, to eat and sleep and breathe in one place for more than thirty years of your life, and then one day find yourself awakening somewhere quite, quite different.

 Of course, it hasn’t been as sudden as all that. It has been slow tentative steps beyond the forest surrounding Cackle’s and carefully planned trips to the witching markets on quiet days and a day spent picnicking in a meadow not too far from the academy, watching the sun climb higher and then lower in the sky and the wildflowers bend and wave to each other in the wind and ignoring the creeping feeling that she doesn’t belong to the world, that her feet have no right to tread strange land.

 Until she does. Until Hecate allows herself to breathe in the scent of corn roses and wood-sorrel and honey suckle and weigh out foreign ingredients with her own careful hand and eye. Until she tastes the sharp sweetness of the season’s first wild brambleberries, scratches her hand as she plucks them from dense thickets of tangled thorns. And then her caution and uncertainty and fear are thrown to the wind as she is all at once struck not by her loss but of _how much_ there is to life. How full her days can be unconfined to the walls and gardens of a secondary school. The glorious kaleidoscope of sensation she has yet to experience as her world stretches at the seams, spreads in rainbow shades like a drop of ink in water.

 And she feels herself stretch with it. Hecate leaves off her make-up and flies to the next mountain at dawn to feel the first warm yellow of the slow-rising sun on her cheek. Her skirts fall looser to accommodate her steps as she traverses the wilderness of the Yorkshire moors and the heady perfumes of the botanic gardens in Cambridge and even wades in the shallows of a fairy pool in the heart of the West Country.

Hecate buries herself in colours and flavours and feelings. Allows herself to shed a few tears at the opening of a flower she has never seen before. Smiles one of her rare, beautiful smiles at a moon that peels itself into the sky like an overripe orange.

 And through all of it, all of it, is Pippa. Picking up her skirts to wade with Hecate in cold water. Holding her hand as the wind blows wild in a way Hecate had scarcely realised it could when shuttered within the walls and grounds of a castle. Plying her with warm, open kisses in a starlit meadow until she is half-dizzy with the feeling of soft grass against her back and the flutter of Pippa’s eyelashes on her cheek.

 And it is Pippa who suggests they go away together for the autumn half-term. As much as Hecate has come to love roaming the English countryside, there is something about the thought of the rest of the world that makes her shoulders tighten and her breathing quicken.

But Pippa finds them a villa on the south coast of Spain and talks so beguilingly of golden sand and orange groves and sun-ripened evenings that Hecate feels her heart thrum with longing in her chest. And as October deepens and the nights begin to chill and draw in, Hecate feels more certainly than ever that she is not quite done with all that summer has to bring her.

 

Which is how she finds herself blinking slowly awake in a bed with faded yellow sheets, the sun already streaming steadily through gauze curtains that flutter in the breeze. Hecate lets a small, contented groan slip from her lips and rolls over, enjoying the feeling of the soft sheets against her bare legs. The draught spell she created with Pippa has kept the room beautifully cool overnight, and Hecate nestles further into the pillow, happy to doze for the next few minutes before she awakens fully.

Pippa’s side of the bed is empty but still warm, and Hecate assumes that she will soon be called to breakfast by her…well, Hecate hates to use the word girlfriend. Hates how silly and transient it sounds. But she supposes it will do for now.

 Sure enough, it is mere moments before Pippa pokes her head around the door.

‘Good morning darling.’ She half-sings. ‘Fancy something to eat?’

Hecate opens one rebellious eye. Pippa is standing in the doorway, her hair loose and mussed from sleep and wearing nothing but a little white lace slip of a robe. Hecate sits up a little, rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

‘What time is it?’

‘Early.’ Pippa admits, going over to sit at Hecate’s side of the bed. ‘But it’s a special day, after all.’ She kisses Hecate then, a slow tender brush of lips. When she draws back, her eyes are soft and bright. ‘Happy birthday darling.’

Hecate’s eyes widen with surprise.

‘You remembered.’ She murmurs, catching Pippa’s hand with her own and bringing it to her lips. Pippa rolls her eyes fondly.

‘I was hardly going to forget – Hecate!’ She doesn’t finish her sentence. Hecate pulls her closer until she topples onto the bed, circles her waist with her arms and kisses her, over and over. Pippa’s lips are soft and pliant against her own, her hands moving to bury themselves in Hecate’s hair. Her nose bumps against Hecate’s and she lets out a low giggle.

‘Hecate, we have to get up.’

‘It’s my birthday.’ Hecate all but growls, stealing another kiss. ‘I believe we don’t have to do anything.’ She attempts to roll Pippa beneath her, but Pippa squirms and wriggles out of her grip.

‘Oh no you don’t.’ She laughs, and springs off the bed as Hecate narrows her eyes and makes another grab for her. ‘Come on you wanton thing, I got croissants in for breakfast and they’ll burn.’

‘So, let them burn.’ Hecate murmurs, but she doesn’t mean it. With a half-hearted groan she swings her legs off of the bed, looks up expectantly at Pippa until her other half relents and kisses her again, cupping Hecate’s face in her hands. But it’s over too soon, and Hecate looks breathlessly after Pippa as she walks back into the living room.

‘Come on. Breakfast.’ Hecate smiles fondly to herself, reaches for her own midnight-blue robe (Pippa had taken one look at Hecate’s wardrobe and declared all of it unsuitable for a week in Andalucia.) and follows her out.

 

* * *

 

Pippa has laid out breakfast on the balcony. Piles of fresh fruit and a steaming pot of coffee await, and as Hecate takes a seat, Pippa brings out a plate of croissants.

‘Just about caught them.’ She says cheerfully, pulling out the other chair as Hecate pours them both coffees. ‘And look.’ Pippa reaches for a pomegranate, cuts it in half to reveal jewelled red flesh. ‘Fresh picked this morning. Isn’t it beautiful.’

Hecate smiles in reply, reaches for her half and takes a careful bite. Imagines each seed is tethering her a little closer to this new world, this world of blue skies and early morning sunshine and breakfast outside with Pippa.

‘Oh and Hecate?’

Hecate blinks, starts out of her reverie, to find Pippa grinning at her. ‘These came for you in the post this morning.’

Pippa waves her hand with a flourish, and a number of envelopes and parcels appear on Hecate’s empty plate.

Hecate looks down the pile, stiffening a little in her surprise.

‘I don’t understand.’ She half whispers.

‘Don’t understand?’ Pippa’s voice is teasing, but there is a faint sadness in her eyes. ‘Hecate, how can it be a surprise that the people who love you want to remember you on your birthday.’

‘I suppose.’ Hecate murmurs, tracing her fingers over the thick card and brown paper. She recognises Ada’s beautiful swooping script, and Dimity’s block capitals and even Mildred Hubble’s spiky lettering. ‘But I have been at Cackle’s for the last thirty of my birthdays. Most people who wanted to give me something could just hand it to me as they pleased.’ Pippa’s hand comes to cover Hecate’s, her eyes welling up a little.

 

Hecate has spent long, insensate evenings shuddering in Pippa’s arms and coming to terms with the decades she spent imprisoned within their school, weeping for every year of her life lost to her childhood crime. This week away with Pippa is the first time she has slept easily, not waking half-drenched in sweat in the middle of the night with sleep-drunk pleas on her lips. Not wishing to disturb the peace she has found she has avoided the topic of her confinement altogether.

 But her tone is light, and as she looks up at Pippa she smiles reassuringly.

‘I’m okay, Pipsqueak.’ Pippa sniffs and ducks her head, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her robe.

‘I know. I know you are, my Hiccup.’

 

Hecate sips her coffee and reads her cards aloud to Pippa, who nibbles at a pastry and giggles at some of the girls’ messages. Ada writes a particularly kind, heartfelt message that makes Hecate’s heart constrict a little in her chest, and encloses a pair of tickets for a performance of Chaudron’s ninth symphony by the London Instrumentless Orchestra for when she returns. Dimity gifts her a broomstick maintenance kit and a card reminding her that ‘You don’t stop having fun when you’re old, you get old when you stop having fun!’ (Pippa nearly chokes on an orange segment she is laughing so hard.) And Mildred encloses with her card a book of Mediterranean herbs and their properties that she has painstakingly illustrated herself.

‘ _Thank you for all the help you’ve given me this year_.’ She writes _‘I hope you enjoy your birthday!’_ (Hecate sniffs, and in the face of Pippa’s knowing smile insists that there is merely something in her eye.)

 As Hecate opens the last card, Pippa says hastily.

‘I want to give you your present in the evening, but I thought I’d give you the card now.’ Hecate pulls it out of its envelope, snorts at the image of two old ladies holding hands.

‘Pippa, we’re forty-five, hardly geriatric.’

‘Just read it, Hiccup.’ Hecate complies, eyes scanning Pippa’s curved, elegant hand.

 ‘ _My dearest Hiccup,_

_Many, many happy returns of the day my darling. I am so happy that I get to be with you on your birthday, and I know it is the first of many that we will spend together. And I know that every year will be better than the last, right until we’re two-hundred year old witches holding hands in our rocking chairs._

_Thank you for being the witchiest witch and the loveliest partner I could ever have wanted or wished for. I love your intelligence and your humour and the little secret smile you do when you think no one can see you. I love your legs and your laugh and the way you transfer behind people to frighten them. I love how much you care for those around you, and I love the way your eyes light up when you talk about proper herb cultivation. But most importantly I love you, I love you so, so much my beautiful, brilliant, wonderful Hiccup. Have the loveliest of days._

_With lots and lots of love,_

_Your own Pipsqueak._

Hecate looks back up at Pippa, her eyes wide and bright and wet, and her breath catches in her throat. The look Pippa is giving her is almost nervous, and Hecate knows that she will have fretted and drafted and redrafted, scared of being too much, of frightening Hecate away.

 And not for the first time Hecate wishes she could reciprocate, tell Pippa the full extent of her feelings for her. Her friendship with Ada had been conducted in such close proximity for so many years that it was rare that either of them needed words to express how the other was feeling – a raised eyebrow or a hand on an elbow sentences and paragraphs of their own.

But with Pippa, everything is at once so fresh and yet so familiar between them that Hecate wants to give her feelings voice. Compose elegies or sonnets or odes that give some meaning to how deeply her feelings for Pippa run, how safe and loved and _whole_ she feels reading what she has written, how merely reading her writing and hearing her voice in her head is manna sweet enough to wash away all the dark, lonely, loveless years.

But she can’t, _she can’t_.

So, Hecate takes Pippa’s hands in her own, looks into her eyes and tries to impart every emotion and thought within her into her words.

‘I love you Pipsqueak. I – I love you so very much.’

And Pippa’s mouth blooms and blossoms into a smile, and as she pushes back her chair and goes to sit on Hecate’s lap, answers Hecate’s words with kisses that are slow and sweet and tender, Hecate thinks that perhaps Pippa understands her better than she had thought.

* * *

 

They dress slowly, moving around each other with that casual intimacy that Hecate realises must come when you have mapped out every inch of another person’s body.

Hecate reaches into their wardrobe, runs a hand through the hanging dresses. Hecate had let Pippa guide her when it came to buying new clothes, had so rarely had to think of wearing anything beyond her practical potions work dresses that she wouldn’t have had the first idea of where to start. But as she peruses Pippa’s careful selection, she allows herself to savour the choice of what to wear, running her eyes over the different colours. Forest green, midnight blue, ochre, scarlet, mahogany.

Eventually she plumps for a burnt orange dress, the linen far thinner and cooler than the dresses she is used to, but the flowing sleeves and billowing skirt making it almost as modest.

Hecate pulls off her robe and searches for some underwear. Behind her, Pippa is lacing herself into her own cornflower coloured dress.

‘Oh Hiccup, you couldn’t do my buttons, could you?’

‘Alright.’ Hecate slips the dress over her head and arms and goes to Pippa, works her fingers at buttons all the way up Pippa’s back, places a kiss on the bump at the top of her spine, and another on the back of her neck. Pippa spins around and their mouths meet lazily, Pippa bringing up her arms to encircle Hecate’s neck.

Pippa hums contentedly, parts from her with a final peck to her lips. She stands back and looks at Hecate admiringly.

‘You look gorgeous.’ She murmurs, her hand moving up and down Hecate’s arm. ‘That colour…’ Hecate blushes a little.

‘It’s not…what I’m used to.’ She says haltingly, looking appraisingly at Pippa who kisses her cheek.

‘But it’s still you.’ She says, softly. ‘Still my Hecate.’

 

They share the mirror at the vanity as they make themselves up, Pippa borrowing some of Hecate’s serum to tame her own curls and Hecate reaching for Pippa’s mascara wand when her own rolls out of sight under the bed. But when Hecate goes to do her usual bun, Pippa stops her.

‘I got you something else.’ Hecate raises her eyebrows.

‘Oh?’ Pippa grins, and conjures a floppy straw hat, a black band tied around the middle. Hecate’s eyebrows climb higher.

‘Pipsqueak _what on earth_ is that?’

‘Hecate, surely a witch as bright as yourself can see that it’s a hat.’ Pippa says, innocently. ‘And any witch worth her salt should know the importance of keeping her complexion.’ Hecate blushes. They have spent three days away from England and already Hecate’s skin is darker than she can ever recall it being in her life. Funny really, given how carefully Pippa had applied sun-potion, how worried she had been at Hecate sitting out in the sun.

She supposes it is a gift from her Spanish mother – something to add to the very few things Hecate has to remember her by, she reflects absently.

Hecate takes the hat from Pippa, twirls it in her hands.

‘I’d need a ramrod to fit it over my hair’ She objects half-heartedly, fingering the band.

‘You could leave your hair loose…’

Hecate quells Pippa with a look, who sighs in defeat. ‘Well alright then. Just wear your bun a bit lower – here, let me.’ Pippa goes to stand behind Hecate, dips her hand in the serum and runs her fingers gently through Hecate’s hair, goes to massage at her roots.

Hecate closes her eyes and fights the urge to loll her head back as Pippa’s fingers glide across her scalp. All too soon, however, Pippa’s fingers move to draw her hair away from her face, and plait and pull until they have fashioned a low bun at the nape of her neck. With an air of triumph, Pippa places the hat on her head.

‘There. Perfect.’ Hecate looks at herself in the mirror, touches her bun self-consciously.

‘Perfect.’ She murmurs.

 

* * *

 

They spend most of the day as tourists, wandering a castle that was the home and workplace of the Moorish alchemist Safiyya Douban. Hecate has admired her work for so many years, as a nineteen-year-old girl traced the equations and methods and essays she wrote five hundred years ago with her finger and dreamed of her crafting with ingredients in faraway lands that Hecate thought she would never have the chance to explore. Examining her instruments and viewing curling, beautifully illustrated manuscripts with her distinctive scrawl patterned on them feels like a balm to that part of her history, a gift to a girl who cried herself to sleep thinking that all she would ever know was the grey walls and turrets and skies of the academy.

 They buy a twisted loaf of olive bread at a nearby bakery and walk down a sun-baked path to the beach, breaking bits off to eat and chatting casually about the exhibit, about its influence on European potion-making, about science. They walk up a little further than they have the past few days, Pippa knotting her hand with Hecate’s own.

After a while, a glance is exchanged, and Hecate sets down their picnic blanket, a worn, checked old thing that Pippa dug out of the Pentangle’s store cupboard. Pippa changes into her swimsuit with a snap of her fingers and goes to swim in the sea, and Hecate reads her book, one eye on her girlfriend, content for now to feel the warmth of the sand beneath her toes and hear the gentle crash of the waves on the shore.

She has done so much in the past few months, and yet still the vastness of the ocean would seem to frighten Hecate. The idea of drifting for years and years before reaching shore, of an unending blueness that stretches a thousand times further than the reach of her world for the last thirty years fascinates and repels her in equal measure.

 And she thinks this way until Pippa smiles at her, and holds out a hand for Hecate to join her, a question in her eyes but nothing like judgement or anticipated disappointment. And Hecate takes off her shoes and takes Pippa’s hand and allows herself to feel the salt waves lapping at her feet, watch her ankles be submerged by water that is as clear and bright as a fairy’s mirror. Breathes, and smiles.

 They get out, and they talk some more, and kiss a little, and read their books with their shoulders brushing and their heads bent together.

And as the sun moves lower in the sky and the sea begins to flush pink and gold with the approaching sunset, Hecate wonders what Pippa has planned for them this evening. She had been so flustered and secretive when Hecate had asked her that morning that she had moved on from the subject, and Hecate supposes that she has booked a table at a restaurant or tickets to some event for them to celebrate her birthday.

Eventually Pippa puts down her book and rests her head against Hecate’s shoulder. Hecate takes this as a sign that Pippa wishes to be listened to and puts her own book down accordingly.

‘Darling,’ Pippa begins, hesitantly. ‘I thought we might go somewhere different this evening.’ Hecate puts her arm around Pippa, adjusts so that her head is rested against Hecate’s collarbone.

‘Oh? Where.’

‘It’s a surprise.’ Pippa’s voice isn’t coy or coquettish, but tinged with worry, and Hecate looks down at her, confused.

‘Pipsqueak?’

‘I hope you like it.’ Pippa twists her hands. ‘In fact I’m sure you will – but…’

‘But…?’ Hecate prompted.

‘But it’s not grand or exciting, and it’s your _first birthday_ anywhere but Cackle’s, and there’s still time to book tickets for a play if you…’

‘Pippa.’ Hecate interrupts, and tips her chin so that she can look Hecate properly in the eye. ‘I don’t want a play, or a restaurant, or anything grand and exciting. I just want you.’

Pippa breathes out, trembling a little in Hecate’s arms, her smile watery.

‘Okay.’ She all but whispers. ‘Okay. Then can I transfer us?’ Hecate places a kiss on her temple.

‘Of course.’

 

* * *

 

Hecate blinks, as her surroundings come into focus around her. She frowns, struggling to place where they are. Were she to hazard a guess, it would be in the clearing of an orchard. They are sitting on soft grass, and they are surrounded by trees bearing ripe oranges and pomegranates and persimmons all around them.

But there are also bushes weighed down by unfurling white roses and pink buds of magnolia blossoming, whilst the scent of eucalyptus and night stock and jasmine hangs in the air with a heady, sensuous sweetness. She cannot think of what orchard could host such an eclectic mix of plants.

A garden then – but there is no house or castle in sight. Only the green of the trees stretching out into the horizon. And it’s more than that, Hecate realises. There is something in the air, like a faint, silvery hum carried between the trees in the wind.

Hecate looks down. Pippa has been here before – there is a picnic blanket on the grass, and a hamper.

 

‘I got it ready this morning.’ Pippa says softly, and Hecate turns to look at her. ‘There’s a pretty strong misdirection spell around this place for any unfortunate ordinaries.’

‘Where are we?’ Hecate asks, hardly able to think as her senses flit from one sight and smell to another.

‘The Night Garden.’ Pippa takes her hand, looks at her apprehensively. Guides her as they sit down on the blanket. Hecate blinks.

‘What is The Night Garden?’

‘It’s…well, it’s something quite special.’ Pippa takes a deep breath. ‘It’s a naturally occurring instrumentless orchestra.’

Hecate’s eyes widen.

‘But – but they’re impossibly rare.’ She murmurs. Pippa nods.

‘I know. I found this one when I was travelling after Weirdsister. I was upset, and thinking about you, and I came across the clearing and suddenly…’ she looks up at Hecate. ‘May I?’

Hecate nods. Pippa closes her eyes, frowns in concentration. For a moment, the sound of the wind in the trees is something like whispering. And then the air is all of a sudden filled with the strumming of a guitar, low and sweet and beautiful. Hecate looks around, eyes filling with tears.

‘You remembered.’ She whispers, feeling her lip tremble and her heart swell and throb within her. ‘After everything.’

Pippa nods, takes Hecate’s hands as an invisible cor anglais plays the first few haunting notes of the melody.

‘Your favourite piece. We listened to it over and over in your bedroom. And I hadn’t realised that it had stayed with me, but as soon as I came here it was as if the garden had plucked the music from somewhere deep and locked away in my memories.’

She goes to brush away at Hecate’s tears with her thumb. ‘I stood, right here, and I realised how much I loved you still; how full my heart was of the thought and memory of you. And it was beautiful. I felt so at peace. As though you were standing right next to me – as though I had been gifted a piece of you, right when I needed you most.’

Hecate can’t speak, her voice stuck and stuttering in her throat. She can only look at Pippa, drink in her face with her eyes and reach over blindly to take her in her arms and kiss her, lips clumsy and too quick as she tries to show how much this means.

Pippa seems to understand and steadies her, her arm around Hecate’s waist the most steadfast thing in the world, her mouth slow and firm until Hecate breaks away with a sob, cheeks flushed and stained with tears as she leaves kisses at Pippa’s cheeks, buries her head in her lap and cries. Pippa’s hands rest in her hair, and Hecate breathes and breathes and cries at the surety of Pippa’s hold, at the sincere, bright hope of Pippa’s love, for her own heart that she had thought had surely stopped beating, had withered and wasted away in her chest the day she had told herself that her touch could bring nothing but ruin and misery to those she loved.

 Eventually her breathing slows, and Hecate stills and calms. She raises her head, looks into Pippa’s eyes, and the look Pippa gives her in reply is steadfast and knowing and so, so full of love that Hecate can only kiss her again, whisper a shaky ‘I love you in her ear.’

Around them, the orchestra swells, and the guitar rises and cascades over it like rippling water.

Hecate tucks her head into the crook of Pippa’s head and shoulder.

 ‘It was my mother’s favourite.’ She says, after a while. ‘She didn’t bring much with her, from Valencia, but she brought music – ordinary music. And I remember she would listen to this record, to this particular movement, and turn her head to the window and weep. And I don’t think I ever fully understood why, until…’ she trails off. She doesn’t need to continue.

Pippa kisses her forehead, and entwines her free hand with Hecate’s. Hecate takes a deep breath.

‘I always wanted to come here. To the country where she was happy. And then when I played you the record, and you listened and you _understood_ , I wanted to come here with you. Then I looked at you, and I realised that I wanted more than that, even. I wanted to be happy, with you. Before I even knew what it meant, I knew I wanted you. And there was so, so much that I thought that I had lost when I was confined, but being here with you Pippa I…I never want to be apart from you again.’

It’s getting dark, and Pippa’s features are harder to make out in the fading light, but Hecate turns her head to look at her intently, cups her face with her hand. Pippa’s own face is wet, her lip trembling.

‘You mean it.’ She whispers, and it isn’t a question.

In reply, Hecate leans in and kisses her, mouth tender and fierce all at once.

Pippa moans a little, parts her lips as their kisses grow hotter and open mouthed, as the hand that cups Pippa’s jaw moves to the back of her head and Hecate leans forward, pressing herself against Pippa until Pippa is lying back against the grass, looking up at her with dark eyes, whispering her name to the stars.

 And the last few bars of the melody, the last yearning notes of the guitar spill into the warmth of the evening. Later there will be wine and birthday cake and the slow steps of a dance that takes them beyond the branches of orange trees and into the night’s sky. There will be sounds and tastes and scents that will make her smile and laugh and cry. But everything, everything seems to fade into unimportance, into nonexistence next to the feeling of Pippa moving beneath her, the sounds of her moans and whimpers, watching her arch her back and toss her head.

  Not as though her world had shrunk to fit around her, but as if her love for Pippa had grown, had bloomed and blossomed and burst in to flower with such force and magnitude as to reach to the furthest corner of it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment if you enjoyed! x


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